NEW ORLEANS – Super Bowl XLVII forever will be remembered as a battle of brothers, right?

Well, that, and how the matchup of Baltimore and San Francisco produced one mother of a game.

The Ravens threw repeated knockout blows, and the 49ers went everywhere but down. The game, once a rout, turned out to be rousing. In a city that, like no other, can be hangover helper, a bunch of football players sent heads spinning.

One of the quarterbacks was named MVP. The other was the one who passed for 300 yards and made Super Bowl history with his legs, running for the longest touchdown ever for someone at his position.

The scores came on plays as long as 108 yards and as short as 3 feet. There was a fake field goal, a safety and a missed 2-point conversion attempt.

We'd write that Baltimore's 34-31 victory Sunday was lights out, but that would take away from the fact that the lights actually did go out.

This was a game played indoors – on a perfectly clear, pleasant night, mind you – and it was still delayed by outside forces, a power outage halting things for 34 minutes in the third quarter.

After an intriguing regular season topped by three stirring rounds of playoffs topped by two weeks of Super hype, what was another half-hour of eerie, indoor twilight, teetering like the cherry on top?

It was heavy, certainly, all these elements stacked up. But the Ravens and 49ers, God bless them, made it worth the weight.

This started out as the night of a John versus a Jim – Harbaugh against Harbaugh, head coach against head coach – but it ended up being more about a Joe.

Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco isn't as interesting to look at as his San Francisco counterpart Colin Kaepernick, who has much of the Bible tattooed on his body.

He isn't as fun to impersonate, Kaepernick the one whose post-touchdown celebration – pretending to kiss his biceps – has become a national sensation.

He isn't as fascinating to talk to, even Flacco admitting here the other day, "I don't know if I would say I'm dull, but I'm probably close to it."

On Sunday, though, Flacco's play wasn't dull. It was the difference, and today he has the MVP award to prove it.

Flacco completed 22 of 33 pass attempts for 287 yards and three touchdowns, the damage having so much impact that the Ravens won despite their offense producing nothing more than two field goals in the second half.

"We don't make anything easy," Flacco said. "I think we gave the country a pretty good game to watch. Not to our liking, necessarily, but that's the way it goes sometimes. That's the way we do things."

That does seem to be the way for these Ravens, who finished the regular season by losing 4 of 5 games and switching offensive coordinators.

But Flacco remained steady throughout, just like he did Sunday. He passed 13 yards to Anquan Boldin for one touchdown, 1 yard to Dennis Pitta for another and 56 yards to Jacoby Jones for the third (converting a third-and-10, too).

Yet, his most telling throw led to no points, in the first quarter, as he was being chased by two 49ers toward the sideline. Flacco flung the ball – honestly, it looked like he was throwing it away to avoid a loss – into an open space.

Pitching a football 30 feet under the circumstances would have been impressive enough. But Flacco had the arm strength to heave the thing 30 yards, where Boldin suddenly appeared to make the catch.

"We've been there before," Flacco said. "We've failed before. We've succeeded before. We're not worried about the outcome. We just go out there and play football, execute and we believe that if we do that ...eventually it is going to work out."

Ah, Joe, you sure you're not dull?

Regardless, Sunday was a great day to be Joe Flacco, and it wouldn't be a bad thing to be him in the immediate future, as well.

Flacco has no contract for next season and now possesses the ultimate hammer to swing in negotiations. He could have signed an extension earlier but, when he and the Ravens couldn't settle on a dollar figure, Flacco decided it would be best to wait.

Smart man. The rumors – before this game – had him in the same neighborhood Peyton Manning and Drew Brees call home. That's approaching $20 million annually. All three of those quarterbacks, by the way, now are Super Bowl winners.

But that's the business side of football. Super Bowl XLVII wasn't about business.

It was about two teams putting on quite a show, lighting up a stadium on a night when the power went out, and a quarterback named Joe, simply Joe.

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